Name: Big Mouth and Ugly Girl
ISBN: 9780007145737

Joyce Carol Oates

When sixteen-year-old Matt is falsely accused of threatening to blow up his high school and his friends turn against him, an unlikely classmate comes to his aid.

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

Big Mouth No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me? Ugly Girl All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

Sally

** spoiler alert **
           Let me begin by saying that I got this book about two years ago as a present and that I haven't read it sooner, because the cover threw me off. I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, but this just didn't look interesting to me. 
But I picked it up a few days ago, not expecting much, but I was surprised in a positive way. 
Let me start with the positive points. 
-the characters were great! Especially Ursula was a refreshing new kind of female character in the YA genre. She was an outsider, no questions asked, but she actually really liked being herself. She reminded me a bit of Holden Caulfield and Tessa from Surburgatory, because she didn't like the "fake" and phony people in her school. She is is not the small, petite girl you see as a main character in YA most of the time. Matt wasn't that "new" but still a nice dude that I got to love while reading the story. 
-the idea of this book was really interesting. I liked the idea of how people would react to a bomb threat that wasn't really a bomb threat and how gossip can change the entire story and people can act really weird about what happened. 
As for the reasons for me disliking the book a bit: 
-the writing was a thing I really did not like. It was ok, but contained some sort of slang I suppose that really confused me at times. 
-the actual story was a bummer. I loved the idea and did not enjoy the way it was woven into the story. I loved the book until page 200 when I thought it was good and fun and resolved . But then the thing with the dog happened and I just thought: why?! It added unnecessary drama to the story. 
-the "love story" was not needed. I really liked there NOT being a forced sexual tension between the main characters. Why can't people just be friends?! But then they needed to kiss in the last sentence and it just ruined a lot of the previous book for me.

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

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